A Talent for Trickery

by Alissa Johnson

  Very well, if she wanted to pout for the duration of their carriage ride, she could pout. They’d discuss her trip to London, and her immediate return to Derbyshire, once they reached the hotel.

  * * *

  Esther wasn’t pouting. She was thinking. And also ignoring Samuel, but only because that made it easier to think.

  More than anything right now, she needed to be sensible. She had planned the trip to London with extraordinary care, paying meticulous attention to every detail. If she let her temper get the better of her now, all that hard work and preparation might come to nothing.

  Yes, Samuel was a presumptuous, maddening, dictatorial arse.

  No, she would not boot him from a moving carriage. Or, more realistically, give him the slip when they reached the hotel.

  It would be tantamount to cutting off her nose to spite her face. Because, despite all that careful planning, things had spiraled out of control rather quickly in London. And Samuel might be just the presumptuous arse she needed to set things right again.

  For all his many, many unfavorable qualities, he remained a clever, well-connected gentleman accustomed to working in secrecy. And he was a man she could trust. Not unequivocally—she didn’t trust any man unequivocally—but she was fairly confident that he was, in a general sense, a reasonably decent human being. It was more than could be said of most people.

  Furthermore, she was stuck with him. She simply didn’t have the time or resources to engage in a game of cat and mouse with the man. Trustworthy or not, welcomed or not, Samuel was staying. That being the case, he might as well be of some use.

  She was putting the finishing touches on her plans of how best to utilize his presence when they reached the hotel. Esther allowed Samuel to assist her from the carriage but left him to secure rooms on his own. She had no interest in being subjected to the staff’s knowing smirks.

  Inside her own rooms, she yanked off the loathsome mourning bonnet and tossed it aside. She wished she could change out of the itchy crepe dress, as well, and into her soft cotton nightgown. It wasn’t quite seven, but she would have given nearly anything just then to crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

  Instead, she used the few moments of solitude to practice what she wanted to say to Samuel, then took a series of deep, steadying breaths to settle what remained of her temper.

  When Samuel knocked softly on her door a few minutes later, she was ready to have a civil, rational conversation with the man.

  “It’s open,” she called out.

  Samuel locked the door behind him and gave her a look of reproof. “It shouldn’t have been open.”

  “I knew you were coming.”

  He removed his hat and tossed it on a chair. “So you’re talking to me now?”

  “I wasn’t being quiet to punish you.” That had merely been a happy coincidence. “I needed to think.”

  “Fine. Now I need you to talk.”

  “Very well,” she said but offered no other response. She would let him talk first. It would give him a sense of control, which every man desired, and it would give her a sense of what cards he might be holding.

  He gestured toward the door. “I’ve ordered a meal for us.”

  Not a promising hand, Sir Samuel. “Thank you.”

  Then he gestured toward a set of armchairs. “Will you sit?”

  “Thank you, no.” If she sat and he didn’t, it would put him in a position of power. He already towered over her by a solid foot, no point in making it three. “But you may sit, if you like.”

  “No.” He caught his hands behind his back, the dark fabric of his coat pulling across broad, muscular shoulders. “To business, then. I’ve a compromise to offer, Esther.”

  Well, it appeared he had been making plans of his own. “I am all ears.”

  “If you will agree to leave London first thing tomorrow, I will promise to keep this little excursion a secret from your family.”

  And that, she thought, was why she trusted Samuel, and even liked him on occasion. Another man would continue to demand to know, first and foremost, what she was doing in London. Samuel sought first to secure her safety, and through compromise no less. Unfortunately, his approach did not meet her needs, but she appreciated his choice of priorities nonetheless.

  “That is a reasonable offer,” she returned, “but I’m afraid there is no benefit in it for me. I have every intention of informing Lottie of my trip upon my return.”

  “Have you?”

  “Of course. The purpose of my secrecy is not to deceive my family. It is to keep them from worry, which they’ll not do once I am safely back in Derbyshire.” She held up a hand when it looked as if he might argue. “I have another suggestion.” One she had worked out during the long, silent carriage ride. “I will allow you to aid me in my purpose in coming to London, thereby speeding its conclusion. In exchange, you will promise not to send word to my family or Sir Gabriel or Lord Renderwell that I am currently in London.”

  “Gabriel will be back in town in a little over two days.”

  “Well, with any luck, my business will be done by then.” Oh, she hoped she would be that lucky. She liked Samuel’s fellow private investigator, Gabriel, even more than she liked Samuel, but she trusted him far less.

  “What is your business?”

  “Promise first.”

  He shook his head. “Tell me what you are doing in London and who the young man we saw today is, and I will consider keeping your confidence while you’re here.”

  “That is not—”

  “I’ll make no promises until I know what sort of danger you’re facing.”

  Damn it, she would have to compromise on the compromise. “I don’t know who he is. I don’t,” she insisted when he growled at her. Again. “I’ve no idea. I… Here. Look.” She retrieved her chatelaine bag from the bed and pulled out a small, torn piece of paper which she handed to Samuel.

  He read the short note in silence.

  I know who you are. Meet Wed. Pddy Sta. 6pm. Come alone. Bring 10p.

  It was rather funny to watch his expression jump from grim to befuddled. “Ten pence? Ten pence?”

  “It is most odd,” she agreed.

  “What sort of blackmail is ten pence?”

  “Perhaps he meant pounds,” she ventured, then shrugged when he gave her a dubious look. “It is as good a theory as any you’ve offered.”

  He held up the note. “Was this sent to your rooms?”

  “No, it was handed to me by a young boy in Spitalfields.”

  “Spitalfields?” He dropped his hand. “You went to Spitalfields? You idiot.”

  Oh, he did make it hard to be civil. “I am not an idiot.”

  “You went to Spitalfields,” he repeated, very slowly, as if she was, perhaps, too much of an idiot to understand why he thought her an idiot. “Realm of rookeries and flash houses. Home to footpads and cutthroats and—”

  “And people like me,” she finished for him.

  “You are not—”

  “I was born in Spitalfields.”

  That seemed to bring him up short, but only briefly. “You may have been born there, but—”

  “But I grew up in boardinghouses in places like Bethnal Green. Quite an improvement over the common lodging house of my infancy, I’m sure. We had a room, sometimes two to ourselves. Such luxury.”

  “I don’t—”

  “And when I was six, my father took us to Bath, where he swindled a small fortune from a young woman and used those ill-gotten gains to rent an entire house. We lived there for three months, until the young woman’s brother came home from abroad, broke into our house, beat my father senseless, shot him in the leg, and gave Lottie three pounds to see the lot of us out of town. We came back to Spitalfields.”

  She paused, but he didn’t try to speak, which was a littl
e disappointing. She rather liked interrupting him. “It was several more years before my father became a proficient criminal. I was ten the last time we paid for lodgings in the East End.”

  And she’d been nineteen the last time she’d worked there with her father, but she didn’t mention it.

  She gave him a look of reproach. “How quick you are to remind me of my filthy origins when it suits your purpose, and how easily you forget when it does not.”

  “I didn’t mention your origins. You did.”

  “I…” Oh. Right. She had. She was, perhaps, a mite touchy about her sordid past. Particularly in the company of someone like Samuel, whose pristine beginnings made her own seem even shabbier by comparison. But Samuel was not wholly without blame.

  “You assumed I was waiting for a mark or an accomplice at the station,” she pointed out. And he’d been worried she might stab him in the carriage. That had cut to the quick. Years ago, she had flashed her blades at a few of her father’s more unpredictable cohorts because he had asked it of her. She’d been a foolish young woman then. She wasn’t a monster now.

  “I didn’t assume,” Samuel retorted. “I merely asked. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t know of your origins.”

  Frowning, she retrieved the note from his hand. “How could you not?”

  “Your father’s early career and whereabouts were always a mystery.”

  “Renderwell must know by now.” As far as Esther could tell, Lottie told her husband every damned thing.

  “Probably. He’s never mentioned it.” He studied her a moment, his expression one of idle curiosity. “You have the speech and manners of a lady of breeding.”

  She didn’t mind curiosity, so long as it wasn’t a precursor for judgment and disdain. “My father’s doing. It is difficult to swindle a class of people with whom you can’t converse. Father was a great mimic, and he taught us well. He wouldn’t allow anything but fine manners and speech under his roof. When we had one.”

  “It’s an act?”

  “No. I suppose it must have been, once,” she admitted. “But by the time we went to Bath, the fine accent and manners were natural to me.”

  “Didn’t your friends wonder at both?”

  “I didn’t have friends,” she replied, a little surprised at the question. “Father kept us isolated regardless of our neighborhood. He had too many enemies. When interaction could not be avoided, we used an alias.” And had learned early how to remember a fabricated family history. They had been the Oxleys, the Farrows, the Gutierrez family. Her father had quite enjoyed being Hernando Gutierrez, the dashing Spaniard who’d taken in his orphaned nieces and infant nephew. Lottie and Esther had been forced to call him Uncle Hernan for months. “I thought you knew all this as well.”

  “I knew that to be the case when your father worked for us.” He tipped his head at her. “I didn’t know you’d always been alone.”

  “I wasn’t alone. I had Lottie. And later Peter.” And she didn’t like the way he was looking at her. As if he pitied her. What was that, but another kind of insult? “We are quite off topic. I am not an idiot for having gone to Spitalfields.”

  “Anyone who goes into places like Spitalfields when they have a choice otherwise, is an idiot.”

  “That is unfair. There are decent, honest, hardworking people who live there.”

  “A great many. But their combined innocence does not render the cutthroats less vicious. What were you doing there?”

  She shook her head. A compromise went both ways. “I’ll have your promise first.”

  Samuel rubbed his chin with the back of his hand in a thoughtful manner. “If I agree to help you with your business, then you must agree that I am in charge of that business, and you, for as long as you are in London.”

  “No.” Good Lord, no. She couldn’t believe he’d even suggest such a thing. Either he was jesting, or he was testing her, or she had significantly overestimated his intelligence.

  “Esther—”

  “I’ll not take orders from you.” She didn’t take orders from anyone. “You may give orders, if you like, but I’ll not promise to follow them.”

  “Orders that don’t have to be followed are called suggestions,” he replied in a bland tone.

  “Then I shall agree to take your suggestions under advisement.”

  About the Author

  Alissa Johnson is a RITA-nominated author of historical romance. She grew up on air force bases and attended St. Olaf College in Minnesota. She currently resides in the Arkansan Ozarks, where she spends her free time keeping her Aussie dog busy, visiting with family, and dabbling in archery. Visit her at www.alissajohnson.com.

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